The Guv & facts

— Fact No.1: Sheila Oliver is Speaker of the N.J. Assembly, one of the two most powerful posts in the legislature.

— Fact No. 2: She’s African American.

— Fact No. 3: She represents a district that includes several dysfunctional public schools with largely minority enrollments.

— Facts No. 4-5: She’s one of several influential Democratic public officials blocking a modest school-choice pilot program for New Jersey. That program would enable some parents with children in dysfunctional schools (such as some schools in Speaker Oliver’s district) to send their kids to better schools elsewhere of their own choice.

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— Facts No. 6-8: The N.J. Education Association, the big teachers’ union, is one of the most powerful special interests in the state, as measured by campaign contributions and sums spent on lobbying for its agenda. It opposes school choice. In general, its donations and endorsements heavily favor Democrats.

— Fact No. 9: Speaker Oliver’s Democratic Party commands almost unanimous voter loyalty from African Americans and claims to be — in contrast to the other party — highly sensitive and attuned to their needs and concerns.

The question: Should Gov. Chris Christie have mentioned Fact No. 2 above in defending his proposed school-choice pilot program before an audience at a Baptist Church in Paterson?

We’d say no — even though he stated an indisputable fact. It came off sounding gratuitously racial.

The usual suspects — Democrats chiefly among them — were predictably and alacritously swift in seizing on the remark and parlaying it into a race-card play. You could almost hear the glee as the card hit the table with a loud smack: Yessss!

Christie should have anticipated all this. And anticipated that it would draw attention away from his Opportunity Scholarship Act (his school-choice pilot program) and focus it on the usual racial hoo-ha.

It was not racial animosity that prompted Christie to mention Fact No. 2, we’re sure; it was frustration over Facts No 1 and No. 3-9.

Christie’s comment overlooked another fact, Fact No. 10. While Democratic politicians are among the leading obstructionists of school choice (and serious urban school reform in general), preferring to side with their political benefactor, the teacher’s union, African Americans are nevertheless significantly in the forefront of the fight for school choice, as evidenced by — just one example — Bishop Reginald Jackson and the Black Minister’s Council of New Jersey.

Speaker Oliver insists that rather than school choice there be more “investment” in city schools. Which means, of course, even greater spending than the current levels making those schools among the most lavishly funded, per pupil, in the world (Fact No. 11), without, by the way, commensurate achievement results (Fact No. 12).

Now this is opinion: Calling for more “investment” in city schools is what Democratic politicians often do when siding with the big teachers’ union against the interests of the parents and children they claim to represent.